Harry Dean Stanton Movies and Career Information

Harry Dean Stanton (born July 14, 1926) is an American actor of film and television. Stanton was born in West Irvine, Kentucky, the son of Ersel (née Moberly), a hair dresser, and Sheridan Harry Stanton, a tobacco farmer and barber. His parents divorced when Stanton was in high school and later re-married. He has two younger brothers, Archie and Ralph, and a younger half-brother, Stan. Stanton attended the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, where he studied journalism and radio arts. He also studied at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California, where his classmates included his friends, Tyler MacDuff and Dana Andrews. Stanton is a U.S. Navy veteran of World War II. He served as a cook aboard an LST during the Battle of Okinawa. Stanton has appeared in both indie and cult films (Two-Lane Blacktop, Cockfighter, Escape from New York, Repo Man), as well as many mainstream Hollywood productions, including Cool Hand Luke, The Godfather Part II, Alien, Red Dawn, Pretty in Pink, Stephen King's Christine and The Green Mile. He has been a favorite actor of Sam Peckinpah, John Milius, David Lynch, and Monte Hellman, and is also close friends with Francis Ford Coppola. He